But I can only pour you this poem:
with poor cloth-made and form not yet shaped,
metaphors rain upon flesh and bone
floating riddles dress in pale champagne froth
tiers of honeysuckle foam pin to a clover’s song
light seeps inside the ink droplets black–
an ever-musing vestal rhyme
charts my fingers to your mortal gasps.
With warmth of day the eyes grow dark,
I breathe your name of caress reigns
where wings of holy light stretch my ocean vast,
in soft similes of wind-drops caught
and hollow crowning thorns.
Weak nods full of sleep in the shadows deep,
old notes draw your breaths once more–
depart soon as last sighs coax from my lips,
courting you home.
by Lana Bella
Lana Bella has a diverse work of poetry and flash fiction anthologized, published and forthcoming with more than eighty journals, including Aurorean Poetry, Burningword Journal, Chiron Review, Contrary Magazine, elsewhere, The Criterion Journal, Poetry Quarterly, and Featured Artist with Quail Bell Magazine, among others. She resides in the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam with her novelist husband and two frolicsome imps.
